264 



THE ILLINOIS FAEMER. 



Sept' 



For the Illinois Farmer. 



Clover will Grow in Egypt. 



Fkiend Dunlap :— I notice that in your Far- 

 mer for July you half doubt whether clover will 

 grow in Egypt. I think that my experience in 

 this line will settle this question. 



"When I came to this section, six years ago, 

 I bought a farm mostly under fence with good 

 buildings, for this conntry, and some fruit trees, 

 for eight dollars an acre. I thought it cheap 

 indeed I knew that I could not hire the amount, 

 of work that had been done on the place for 

 what I paid for the farm. Whether the soil was 

 good or poor I did not stop to examine or to in- 

 quire, for the place seemed so cheap that 1 

 bought it without hesitation. Shortly after, on 

 going over it, I noticed several gullies in the 

 fields— " washed places "—so called, which my 

 neighbors told ma were caused by neglect, and 

 that the place was worn out. This did not 

 alarm me much, for I pursued another business 

 for a Kving, and only needed the farm for rais- 

 ing fruit. To be very candid, 1 must confees 

 here that I was no farmer, and that though I had 

 a taste for it, everybody at once could see that 

 I was a green hand. .1 a year or so I found that 

 my fruit trees did not thrive well ; in short, all 

 my crops were so poor that at last I became con- 

 nnced that the place really was worn out. I 

 had no clover or grass, and no green feed of any 

 kind for my cows, except what they got in the 

 woods, and it made no odds how many cows I 

 kept, we could make no butter, and had scarcely 

 milk enough to put in tea, saying nothing about 

 cream. I had always been used to seeing grass, 

 so I hired a man to sow timothy on a ten acre 

 field along with oats in the spring. The oats 

 rusted, the grass came up and died, and I let 

 the field stand as good for nothing. Three 

 years ago business changed with me. I was 

 reputed to be very black in politics, and I thought 

 it best for me to go to farming. 



This is the way I commenced. I built a yard 

 about fifty ftet square on one side of a decent 

 stable 1 had just erected, and put my cattle in it 

 at night. In the morning with wheel barrow 

 and shovel I saved the manure in a heap and 

 under a shelter. The heap rapidly grew in size, 

 and in the course of six months I had a large 

 quantity of manure. Of course the people 

 laughed at me, such a thing never having been 

 done before. In the winter I stabled my stock, 

 which I was able to do with much less feed than 

 usual, and meanwhile saved the manure. In the 



spring we hauled out a great many loads on the 

 ten acre field ; then it was plowed, sown with 

 oats and clover. The clover I put on myself, it 

 being my first trial at sowing seed of any kind. 

 I put about half a bushel on the lot. The oats 

 did better thii time, and the clover came up, 

 though not very thickly. Meanwhile I had put 

 clover on another lot, and the first year after 

 sowing, I turned in my cows, getting tired of 

 paying twenty cents a pound for all the butter 

 we used, which was a great deal. The cows 

 were so glad to get it, and so hungry, and the 

 stand so light that they eat it to ihe ground, and 

 had to turn them into the road again. But in 

 the lot I am speaking of, I did not turn anything 

 the next year, nor the second year, till after I 

 had mowed it, when I ran a fence through the 

 middle to save some fruit treeb in one part, and 

 turned the cows in. The result was that the 

 clover grew as fast as the cows could eat it, we 

 had good cream, and we all got in the habit oi 

 eating up the butter as fast as we made it, which 

 was a shame, for we had "sights of it," but it 

 was so fresh and good, and so much better than 

 meat and grease, and cheaper too, that we did not 

 care. 



Then I put manure around the fruit trees, 

 the change was wonderful, for they brisked up 

 and grew rapidly, but 1 noticed that where ever 

 I put the manure the clover after a while sprung 

 up, and it has now got among my strawberries, 

 in the fence corners, and in fact all over my 

 farm. Every day I see people looking at my 

 clover with wonder, and as they ride by almost 

 break their necks in looking back, for they all 

 said that neither clover nor grass will grow 

 here, and that there is no use of trying. 



To conclude, by sowing clover I have made my 

 farm the most valuable of any in the vicinity, 

 and I see that others are following my example, 

 so that in a few years I shall not be ashamed to 

 have a man who knows what farming is ride 

 through our settlement. I find, too, that on 

 land any way fresh, or on any decent soil, clover 

 will grow as well as U will any where, and that 

 the very best thing the farmers here can do is to 

 sow clover, for it wiil make poor land rich, and 

 keep new land so. Farming, like any other oc- 

 cupation, is a trade, and I think that after a 

 while I shall be a passable farmer. The natives 

 begin to think I know something about it now. 

 The fact is, a iarmer must bring intelligence into 

 the field with him, and it will help Lim a good 

 deal, if he have an agricultural paper, providing 

 he can r.ead. Since I have really turned my at- 



